


Night Shift

by Tigerkid14



Series: Kinktober 2018 [14]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Phobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 02:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16296524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tigerkid14/pseuds/Tigerkid14
Summary: A misunderstanding between Helena and Myka affects the whole team who join together to fix it.





	Night Shift

**Author's Note:**

> Kinktober 2018, Day 14, Prompt: Tentacles

“Well, it is rather old-fashioned,” Helena said.

Myka spluttered at her in indignation. “Old-fashioned? Old-fashioned?!  _ You _ are telling me that I’m being old-fashioned?!”

“Is that another one of those age jokes?” Helena asked warningly.

“You still get excited about how fast cars go and think we’re wasting money buying bread instead of making our own,” Myka replied unwisely.

It was a spirited discussion that ended when Helena hung up her phone abruptly. Myka did not throw hers across the room when this happened, that dent had always been there, and her phone had a cracked screen from accidentally dropping it on the concrete floor in the Warehouse.

If anyone asked them later, they were not fighting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So are you and HG fighting?” Claudia asked, after watching yet another terse phone call between Myka and Helena.

“No,” Myka replied shortly.

Claudia looked over her shoulder at Steve who shook his head and mouthed “she’s lying” but who wisely was simply looking at the papers on Artie’s desk when Myka shot a suspicious glance over her shoulder in his direction.

“Gotta be rough,” Claudia tried again, “her being on the road so much right now, helping Artie with finding this elusive artifact.”

“We’re managing,” Myka was not cooperating. She moved towards the filing cabinet, a book in hand for reference as she began looking something up.

“I think what Claudia is trying to say is that you seemed kind of tense on the phone just now,” Pete offered from the desk in the corner where he was trying to build a tower of cards with Dai Vernon’s deck of cards, a challenging feat since the cards would shift position if he thought too hard about one of them.

“We had a discussion recently,” Myka grudgingly allowed, “which did not go well, but it’s not a big deal.”

“So you had a fight and you’re mad,” Steve translated unnecessarily for the room.

“What did she do?” Pete asked.

Myka, angry as she was, immediately jumped to Helena’s defense, “What makes you think she did anything?”

“Whoa, hey,” Pete held up his hands defensively, looking up at her, “it just stands to reason that if you’re mad it’s because she did something. It doesn’t make any sense if you’re mad because you did something.”

“She made a remark about a matter which I take seriously,” Myka tried to leave it there but the other three just stared at her until she sighed and gave in. “She said my phobia of tentacles was old-fashioned.”

This was met with three blank stares.

“Is it?” Pete finally asked.

“Yeah, I thought phobias were just...phobias,” Claudia said. “I didn’t know they could have an expiration date or anything.”

“Exactly!” Myka said with rising indignity. “Phobias don’t have to be logical or timely, they just are!”

“What did you say to her about it?” Steve asked. Three heads turned in his direction. “Well, you did try talking about it with her, didn’t you? The fact that what she said upset you?”

“I may have said a few things,” Myka admitted.

“Not nice things, I’m guessing,” Pete said.

“You didn’t make any cracks about her being old, did you? You know she’s getting touchy about that since her birthday is coming up.” Claudia said.

There was a sheepish silence from Myka.

“So what are we going to do about this?” Claudia asked the room at large.

“Stay out of it,” Steve said immediately. Pete and Claudia looked at him in disbelief, Myka in gratitude. He explained, “They always get like this when they’re apart for too long and they fix it as soon as they’re back together.”

“Ooooh,” Pete and Claudia said in unison. Myka looked a little less grateful.

“What is that supposed to mean?” She asked.

“It means you two need to bone.” Pete said.

When Myka was done yelling at Pete and had stormed out of the office, he turned to Claudia and Steve. They just shrugged at him and all three went back to their various activities.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next week was a series of unfortunate events. Every time Helena was returning to the Warehouse, Myka was being sent out and vice versa. They were exchanging words in a civil, yet cool manner, and everyone else was trying hard to stay out of the way of both of them.

Pete had not so subtly asked Artie about any potential artifacts that might be making communication in a relationship harder and while he had gotten quite the education on artifacts in that genre, none of them fit the situation at hand.

When Artie had finally figured out why Pete was asking questions, he had just snorted and refused to get involved, proving himself the wisest of them all.

Eventually, Pete, Claudia, and Steve decided that something needed to be done. Although Steve insisted later that he had been trying to talk them out of it, not helping, and his part was completely inadvertent.

Despite these protestations, somehow, in someway, Myka and Helena ended up trapped together having to communicate to save themselves. Pete did inform them when they complained about the safety risks that “there was a lifeguard on the pool the whole time” which got him raised eyebrows as he hastily backtracked to say that it wasn’t the “whole” time. Certainly not the entire time things were happening, not at all. There had not under any circumstances been someone watching the whole time and therefore there was no need for anyone to be shot or whatever they were thinking with their murderous glares.

“Thankfully we did manage to get things sorted eventually,” Helena conceded many days later in a conversation with Abigail. “I was merely trying to explain how I felt it was the literary influences of her youth that helped develop and embellish her feelings on certain topics. I was not trying to belittle her fear, merely speculating on the source of it since it seems so uncommon these days.”

“And I totally misinterpreted that and then insulted her because I felt insulted, which was a lashing out response which we’ve discussed and I’m going to work on.”

Abigail later checked with Pete to make sure the artifact he ended up using, based on his hours of conversation with Artie got put back on the correct shelf and was in fact properly neutralized, and also to stress that maybe he ought to let his colleagues work out their issues without the help of artifacts. But even she had to admit that things were a lot better without the two women at odds with each other.

Glancing out on the floor to one of the nearby sections of stacks where Helena and Myka were shamelessly flirting while they organized some shelves, the team enjoyed a moment of solidarity and calm.

“See what happened was your moms had sex,” Pete quipped to Claudia

“I know and it rocks,” Claudia replied. Steve and Pete looked at her curiously. “What? You could cut the tension around here with a knife. Now we can all relax.”

“Right after someone hits the neutralizer button for that section anyway,” Steve pointed out. They all glanced back towards Myka and Helena and sighed, Claudia going for the button.

“Okay, canoodling in the stacks is still not a good idea,” she said as she got ready to push it.

“Yeah, you tell them that,” Pete said, making his way to the door.

“Okay, Pete!” Claudia hit the button and hearing the yells of outrage from the stacks also made good her escape.

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Brooklyn 99 for the bare bones (heh) of the idea along with some fun quotes and the title of this one.
> 
> If you've stuck with me this long, I thank you for your forbearance in how often I go for fluff or humor instead of the sexy fun times you're probably looking for in a writing challenge called "Kinktober".


End file.
